Frequent commenter and fellow #gunblogger_conspiracy regular ExistingThing has posted an excellent and detailed report of his experience at a 2 day Appleseed rifle clinic.
I stand by my earlier remarks. I think that teaching students to shoot on reduced scale targets is a great way to frustrate and alienate beginners. I also believe that the level of accuracy required on the simulated 200+ yard targets is absurd and doesn’t accurately teach distance shooting. Finally, if you anticipate ever having to use your rifle for the defense of yourself or others, it is imperative that the Appleseed program not be your only training. A lot of stuff they teach (aiming with your hips/toes, slinging up to shoot, and the other Camp Perry esoterica) will get you killed.
I think ET did a great job shooting and it’s cool to see his targets get better over the weekend. But I should also note that what took Appleseed two days to teach was covered in one morning by the professionals.
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I’m glad you got your condensed Appleseed training in one morning, I probably should have done the same.
Since you got the same training as I did, I’m sure you had the same results. Give me your address, and I’ll be happy to send you one of the extra targets they gave me (redcoat or aqt, your choice), and you can shoot them at 82 feet, and post the results.
I heard on youtube that Appleseed has a challenge where if you pay for the class, and shoot the first day opening redcoat target perfectly, they give you your money back. Don’t quote me on it, but sounds pretty fair to me.
Oh yeah. It’s on like Babylon.
It’s on like the break of dawn!
Oh yeah; I DO agree with pdb that Appleseed should not be your only training if you plan to shoot rifles defensively. One of the things Appleseed did NOT cover, was bullet drop, and a battlesight zero.
When shooting any projectile, the projectile’s path is parabolic. But when shooting rifles, the bullet goes far enough that this parabola actually matters. If you zero for 300 yards, and shoot at 160 yards, you will have to aim low. If you shoot a target at 350 yards you will have to aim high.
This was not covered because the class is about teaching you how to make your body a stable platform to shoot from. Once you have benchrest-like stability, you still need to know where you should aim depending on your zero.
wait, what?
Appleseed doesn’t cover bullet drop?
And they are supposed to teach long range shooting?
REALLY?
Wow.
Appleseed doesn’t cover bullet drop?
And they are supposed to teach long range shooting?
Well, in fairness, with the huge variety of rifles and cartridges brought to an Appleseed, it would be pretty difficult to calculate drops for everyone. My understanding is that they bring up the concept and then leave it to the students to figure out their own zero.
As a former Appleseed Project state coordinator (life just got too doggone busy) and instructor, I’d like to point out a couple of things here.
First, as PDB pointed out: We have an incredible variety of shooter skill, rifle, and cartridge combinations present at every Appleseed event. Our goal is not to get every shooter to be a long-range marksman in two days. Our goal is to get the shooters to a certain basic level of proficiency. This is the ability to consistently hit a 4 MOA target at 25M. That is a one inch square target at 82 ft. In most cases, a 25M range is all that we have available to us.
As such, teaching more advanced concepts such as gauging the wind, bullet drop, and the battlesight zero are difficult if not impossible. You can spend a couple of hours explaining the theory behind each of these concepts, but the return on investment for a group of, let’s say 50 shooters is going to be extremely limited. You might have 3 or 4 shooters that can understand what we’re trying to explain without being able to get out on a KD range and shoot targets at actual distances.
Now, on occasion, we will have a KD range available to us in addition to the 25M range. In those circumstances, the shooters that demonstrate proficiency at 25M (by scoring 210 or higher on the AQT target) will be taken to the KD range, usually for the latter half of the second day. There, they will be taught those concepts, such as wind estimation, bullet drop, BSZ, range estimation, etc. But before we can teach those more advanced concepts, they have to have the foundation that is established on the 25M range.
Seriously, at any given event, we’ll have people who range in experience from former Marines all the way down to people who have never fired a rifle in their life. So we aim (pardon the pun) to give the largest number of shooters the most instruction and training that can be dished out in a 2 day period.
Now, I have been to quite a few AS shoots. I don’t recall EVER hearing an instructor tell a student that after attending an AS they have learned everything there is to know about shooting a rifle. In fact, just the opposite, most instructors tell those that have attained the Rifleman patch that A) they now need to come learn to teach others by becoming an instructor and B) they still have a lot more to learn about shooting a rifle. No one at AS believes that we are the be-all end-all of rifle marksmanship training. But we are an excellent starting point, and even serve as a refresher on the fundamentals for those that have been shooting for longer than I’ve even been alive.
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